LogFAQs > #950164020

40. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GameCube, 2004)

Metroid is my favorite video game series. Here's a brief summary of the rest of my top five and their biggest strengths:
WarioWare - most creative
BEMANI rhythm games - most addictive
Mario platformers - most influential
F-Zero - most impressive
Metroid's best strengths are a little harder to pin down; I undoubtedly love "Metroidvania" style games but it's not the games' formula I find most appealing, it's their immersion. Metroid games (at their best) hit a great balance between the sci-fi/space themes and their sense of isolation - it's Samus against the world. I'd say most of the folks on this board probably got into the 2D games first, but I started with Metroid Prime and worked backwards. And it's the Prime series that still stands out as my favorite subset of the games, for reasons I'll go into over the course of their three entries. (Yep, all three made my top 40.)
Anyway, Prime 2 stands out as the biggest outlier in the trilogy, breaking away from a lot of the series' conventions in order to distinguish itself from the original. The game takes place on the planet Aether, split into two planes of existence due to some rift in space or whatever. Essentially this creates a Link to the Past-style Dark world version of the entire game world (helpfully named "Dark Aether") where Samus takes damage constantly, unless protected by the light of a safe zone. This also points out another big difference in Metroid Prime 2 - the game is hard and unforgiving. Many of the game's bosses are in Dark Aether, and demand some management of health and the safe zones (or in the case of the above-pictured Boost Guardian, there are literally no safe zones). There's also more complexity here, too - your individual beams have ammunition along with the usual missiles and power bombs - and in each of the main areas you've got multiple keys to track down and collect before gaining access to that area's boss.
On that note, Prime 2 is a much more linear game than the first, largely keeping you confined to each of its sub-areas in one period rather than demanding more complicated backtracking. There's an obnoxious key-gathering final quest that, unlike Prime 1, can't be completed in any way before the very end of the game. The difficulty can border on frustrating, and the ammo management isn't terrible, but also feels somewhat unnecessary. In a lot of ways, I like that they tried to experiment with breaking from convention with Prime 2, but because of that I also think it's the series' weakest entry. It has great highs, though: Sanctuary Fortress is one of the best video game areas ever designed; the Prime series' debut of the Screw Attack is possibly the coolest power-up in all of Metroid; and the entire game ending sequence is absolutely fantastic. Prime 2 isn't perfect, but it's still a masterpiece.

39. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii, 2007)

And hey, here's Metroid Prime 3. I had a tough time separating Prime 2 and 3 - they both don't quite live up to the original, but both have lots of unique strengths, and are fully satisfying games on their own. I actually didn't end up playing Metroid Prime 3 until this past year (I largely missed out on the Wii and Wii U eras of Nintendo) and despite expecting to be disappointed or underwhelmed, I absolutely loved it. I was impressed with how well the game holds up visually (all three of the trilogy do) - the team at Retro Studios consistently blows me away with their ability to craft both exceptionally compelling Sci-fi worlds that both feel at home in the Metroid universe and also feel good mechanically. I found myself just enjoying the process of checking out every new room, scanning around for places secrets might be buried and making notes of what items I'll need to come back with later - the kind of thing that is the hallmark for Metroidvania games in general, but rarely done as well or as immersively as in the Prime series.
MP3's biggest weaknesses are largely up front: the game starts with an overwrought sequence of Samus checking in with a Space Federation commander at the Valhalla spaceship, and there are lots of motion-control tutorials and weird dialogue sequences. Even the game's first "main" area in Norion is mostly an on-rails experience shuttling you through the core story beats. But once the plot is laid out to you and the game opens up it's a nonstop flood of Metroidy goodness - there's secrets to find, in-depth lore if you're interested in it, and lots of fun visual and gameplay bits to keep you compelled the whole way. Structurally, it's a lot like Prime 2 - you've got three main areas of the game, there's some backtracking involved (but not much), and you have a final key-collecting quest baked in at the end. That final quest is much cleverer this time around though; it's built into the floating wreckage of the Valhalla ship that you started the game on, and can be tackled in chunks (with several secrets hidden) from the middle of the game. The motion-controlled shooting also feels great and opens up the game for more complex aiming, though the game is definitely the easiest of the Prime trilogy. Overall it's a really satisfying experience, and made me really excited for what Prime 4 could be, whenever it comes around.

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